Preventing Rape by Self-Defense

By Deborah McCormick

In college, a friend convinced me to take a women's self-defense course. To say the class was a turning point for me is an understatement. I began to see myself very differently. I found in myself new strength, new capabilities, and new anger. If the class had not been taught from a feminist perspective, I would have experienced nothing more than increased fear and helplessness.

I have been consistently amazed since that first class that many self-defense instructors are not interested in assisting women to discover their strengths, but rather prefer to instill fear, encourage individual solutions, and reinforce helplessness. For example, I heard one male instructor tell women that a blow to the throat is useless because many men go to great lengths to develop their neck muscles. In reality, the neck is an extremely vulnerable area. In a self-defense book I read, the author stresses staying with male.companions for safety. When that's not possible, the author suggests such resistance tactics as batting eyelashes and teasing the "harmless" harasser!

These distortions flourish when we forget that the objective of women's self-defense is prevention. Organizations involved in anti-rape work should especially be concerned with prevention, but they are generally set up and funded to provide assistance and support almost exclusively after the violence has occurred. The idea that violence against women may actually be stopped before it happens is a threatening concept to many. But why? For the crime of rape, why is prevention so often a background issue?

Teaching prevention commonly consists of giving women a handout which lists restrictive individual avoidance actions, many of which reinforce survivor self-blame and myths about rape, and apply only to a small specific segment of society (i.e., the young, white, middle-class, urban-dwelling female who is attacked by a stranger in a dark alley, hallway, parking lot or her own home).

This is not prevention. This is "victim-control". We will not stop rape by staying home, „arking cy in well-lit arcas, having dead-bolt locks, and not riding public transportation at night. Not only do different women have different concerns,  ́ut our individual actions are not the solution to the collective problem of rape.

It is also not our.esponsibility to restrict our lives to stop rape. I am not implying that we should ignore thecity that it is easier for rape to occur, that we are vulnerable, in certain situations (such as eke walking in high heels down a dark, empty street. I am saying that it is not our responsibility to resovet omr lives and that the ways we do choose to restrict our liver e not a solution to rape as a a form of violence against

societal problem

WONDER.

TC

Auzyker comme theory, “rapist control prevenBoks to the criminal justice system for the settende fo rape. First, it's obviously not prevention, súmorie pakkes place after the rape has occurred. Second, this male/white supremacist system where one cru buy oneself, out of trouble, prosecution is Faro hast. Crimes committed by people of color are more likely to get to court and result in stiffer penalties than those committed by whites. Crimes committed against people of color are irrelevant. In general, the system works something like this: White raan rapes white woman so she asked for it; white Iman rapes black woinan so she's a whore; black man Ropes white woman so he just can't keep his hands ¿ syET\eing W an? JedWNESE) Neiz inos

Hwy/What She Wants/April-May, 1983

off our women; black man rapes black woman so who cares-that's all they do anyway. In other words, we can forget the criminal justice system as a prevention strategy.3

An effective prevention strategy to any problem must respond to the cause of the problem. Rape occurs as an expression of power, dominance, and control. It is overwhelmingly a crime committed by men against women. All women feel its effects every day. I cannot imagine the freedom I would experience if I never had to consider the possibility of rape again.

As women, we are vulnerable to rape because of our forced dependence on men which denies us power and direct control of our lives. We can be dependent on men in many ways: for physical protection, psychological approval, social status, economic survival and/or political representation. This dependence that we all experience makes us feel helpless as well as see other women as helpless. Simply, by being women, even lesbians who believe themselves no longer dependent on men, we are assumed to be dependent and are vulnerable as a resuit. We often end up believing and internalizing societal expectations that reinforce and continue our

A Forum for Changing Men

dependence and feelings of helplessness. Women, then, are vulnerable to rape as a result of our powerlessness as a class of people. Effective rape prevention means eliminating all aspects of women's vulnerability by altering the power imbalance that exists between women and men in individual relationships and societal interactions. We learn self-defense techniques and confrontation tactics to change this imbalance by taking our power back and demanding respect. We are also increasing our options for resistance in harassing, potentially violent, and outright physically violent situations.

But women are already resisting, surviving and physically fighting back successfully. We just do not realize that's what we are doing, and we're not telling each other about it. The media reports thirteen, completed rapes for every thwarted attempt. This bias reinforces our powerlessness by denying the truth that for every rape there are three attempted rapes.

If we are this successful without the general skills and knowledge that would have us blice our strength and powe, on how successful would we be with these skill and kiege? miken and young women knew they ned net j we *rogied

with respect and dignity? If we were angry instead of afraid?

Pauline Bart (and others') have found it is a far more effective escape strategy to struggle immediately, vigorously and aggressively, than to respond with passive begging and pleading. The key is attitude.

"We will not stop rape by staying home, parking only in well-lit areas, having dead-bolt locks, and not riding public transportation at night.”

Bart found that women who escaped were furious that someone would dare try to rape them and were determined to avoid rape, while women who were raped were more likely to be extremely fearful of death and mutilation."

We must empower ourselves physically aud psychologically. We all have strengths to rely on and weaknesses to be aware of (for example, smil women can be quick and evasive, while big women can be strong and powerful). We can all rely on ourselves and each other, and we can all learn to be angry.'

We must demand to be treated with respect and dignity. On those occasions when we just do not have the energy to assert ourselves, we need to be aware that our attitude and body language usually give us away, making us even more vulnerable at the very times we're least able to protect ourselves effectively. Our insistance on reclaiming our power is what is so threatening about rape prevention. To prevent rape, to stop violence against women, the entire societal structure must change all the way from our individual relationships to our societal interactions. Every one of is must change herself and others.

When we are no longer isolated from other women, wien we have reclaimed our power, when we can live with respect and dignity, we will have ended our vulnerability to rape. We will have accomplished rape prevention.

1. Burg, Kathleen Kerfe. The Womanly Art of Self-Defense: A Commonsense Approuen, 1979.

2. This term, and others, in addition to the feminist rape prevention philosophy will discuss, come from Rape Prevention Workshops: A Group Leader's Guide, by Community Action Strategies to Stup Rape, a project of Women Against Rape, P.O. Box 02084, Columbus, Ohio 43202.

3. It is truly distressing that more and more feminist organizations are establishing reward funds for rapists as if their fund provides a solution to rape. In reality, it is simply a racist, classist response which supports the criminal justice system in its determination of which rapes rate prosecution.

4. Bart, Pauline. Avoiding Rape: A Study of Victims and Avolders, a National Institute of Mental Health Study, 1979, p. 21. 5. Victim Resistance Studies by Frank Javorek and James Selkin.

6. When confronting an armed assailant, we often must "bide our time" until his attention is distracted from his weapon (assuming he is not actively attacking); however, Bart found the mere presence of a weapon did not, in and of itself, determine the outcome of an attack. In other words, our fear is not necessarily the result of the presence of a weapon.

7. See Fear Into Anger by Py Bateman, 1978, and the Queen's Bench Foundation Study, LEAA, 1976.

Deborah McCormick is an incest survivor and martial artist who teaches feminist women's selfdefense classes and workshops. Presently she is offering classes throught the Women's Enrichment Center, Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW), the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Continuing Education Program and Cuyahoja Coranunity College.